#taals

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

After a lot of deliberation, I just made it official...

That's all, folks.

This is the most personally satisfying thing I've ever completed in 20 years of fic writing. I can't thank y'all enough for your support, encouragement, and love through this entire journey. I love y'all 💖🌹

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

Omfg girl help I'm listening to Adam Lambert while I work and it's got me thinking of one shots in the Songs About Getting By universe and I don't need this today.

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

Today's WIP Wednesday is a title reveal! See what I'm calling TAALS2 for reals below the cut.

Since This Ain't a Love Song (TAALS) is now officially part one of Songs About Getting By...

Part 2 will be titled Take a Sad Song.

TAALS2 -> TASS

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

It's Official

This Ain't a Love Song is now PART 1 of the Songs About Getting By series.

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

Sometimes headcanons about my own fic surprise me. Last week I had sea shanties stuck in my head (dear GAWD I don't know why either) and furiously listened to Adam Lambert as loud as my boombox would go to try to purge it. It... kinda worked. But now I'm on an Adam Lambert kick 🤷‍♀️Who fucking knows with my brain.

Enter the headcanon: Picture TAALS/TASS John. Big ol metal head in the 80s, right? Fast forward to 2009/2010 and John's staring down the barrel of approaching senior discounts, but still a metal head because that's how it works in the Hollywood rock scene.

This is what he listens to in the car by himself. He tells no one, not because he's ashamed of anything, he just hasn't figured out a way to annoy his brother with it long distance yet. But of course Jamie knows, so he arranges some bizarre but super fun collaborative album.

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

What about 'before the beginning' for TAALS Jamie?

This was a really fun exercise! As it turns out, a drabble is hard. But I wrote you a drabble, exactly 100 words, of before the beginning (as in, before the start of the first TAALS) from Jamie's POV.

I'm going to plop it below a cut with a warning for mentions of drug use (if you know what you're looking for).

Scotland 1976.

Jamie stomped into a puddle, the laces whipping through rainbow splashes, there and gone again in a blink. He gasped, someone laughed, the sound echoing in the narrow alley, growing louder until he couldn’t hear anything else. The stone wall came up behind him suddenly, hard enough to make the laughing stop. The bloke who’d been chatting him up all night kissed him. Someone strummed an acoustic guitar, or maybe it was… what was his name? He’d not said, just put that paper in Jamie’s mouth. Maybe it was his hands wiggling under Jamie’s shirt making the noise.

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

Care for six sentences from TAALS2?

"But ye called me for my opinion, so here it is. Man up either way. Sounds like that lad has had more than his fair share of struggle, and ye’ve money enough to provide well for him, even if he’s not yers, right? It’s not too late to do the right thing. Frankly, ye’ve no right or reason not to believe Elizabeth. If she went through the trouble of filling out all that paperwork for ye, she was sure enough who the father is.”

[mistresspandorawritesthings]

I'm in the thick of writing the heaviest parts of TASS, which means I've temporarily shifted away from the story's playlist. I usually listen to the same music when I'm writing a big piece like this as a mental shortcut to the right headspace. But sometimes the headspace has to change, and so does the music.

So I've switched over to Sixx AM, which is what I listened to while I wrote most of the second half of TAALS. It's dark and heavy and has some really intense lyrics. Which makes sense, it's the studio band that Nikki Sixx got together when he released The Heroin Diaries, both the book/memoir and the accompanying album of the same name. There's some gut-wrenchers about addiction and recovery and relapse and healing. There's songs about ugly, flawed relationships, and living through awful shit. And the range is incredible, from gentle melancholy to raging fury.

Yes, I'm a fangril. And yes, I'm procrastinating again. I can own that.

Anyway, it's Monday. Here's some music. In fact, here's two songs. "Drive" fits the Songs About Getting By universe so well. And this version of "Maybe It's Time" is one of those quarantine collabs that came out just beautiful (like just check out that artist list, my god).

Alright, back to writing 💖

We're past 92k words btw. She's chonky, y'all.